~ A sabbatical, a quest, and a dream wrapped up in an open-ended, singlehanded sailing voyage; to unplug, to regain focus and reconnect with my creative soul's Muse. I will be out there writing soon! A small sailboat on the big blue, Sine Metu.

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Tag Archives: Sine Metu

Problems are as inevitable and expected as knowing that rain is wet. How you handle those problems is the only thing that matters. Will you use them as bricks, adding to the breadth and weight of the wall before you, or will you use them as stepping stones to line your path?

As Bob Bitchin says, “The difference between an ordeal and an adventure is attitude!”

Today was a very productive day! I finally managed to get that 49 year old engine coupling off the shaft this afternoon… And the only reason it took 4 hours was due to the Dremel 8220 needing to be recharged halfway through the project. As I didn’t want to cut into the bronze shaft and risk there being a balance issue I choose to use a Dremel 8220 instead of a dedicated grinder: Too much muscle in such a confined space. With the Dremel, I was able to use one hand and have a better chance at being careful.

I won’t bore you to death the with blow by blows (literally, as I also pulled a ball peen hammer out of the tool box to help me persuade the rust to give up its death-grip), but I finally managed to get that damn thing off!

While grinding and tapping with the ball peen, the stuffing box began to drip excessively. This wasn’t unexpected, after all that drip was why I was able to buy the boat for $800 in the first place, I knew I had to repack the stuffing box anyway. So, after I removed the coupling, I backed the stuffing box off the lock-nut and removed it completely. Free for the first time in 49 years, I cleaned, carefully repacked and reinstalled it. Doing so, of course, let about a gallon of seawater in, but I had it taken apart and let it free-flow for about half an hour.

Okay, no problem, I knew that would be the case. After all of that grinding, of dropping small chunks of rusted metal, and repacking of the stuffing box, I knew that the cleanup of this little project would include cleaning the bilge.

Before:

After:

After cleaning up the shaft a little I also cleaned out the bilge with a couple of gallons of water and West Marine’s Pure Oceans Citrus Bilge Cleaner ($10). After dumping it in, pumping a little of it out through both bilge pumps (an electric and a Whale Gusher via the cockpit) I decided to give the deck a quick scrub down and let it slosh in the bilge for half an hour before pumping it out, flushing the bilge with fresh water, then using my wet/dry vac to suck every last drop out of the bilge.

Okay, now that I had everything back to back to being nice and clean, I again dry-fitted all of the electric drive components and Lithium LifePo4 batteries, the Sevcom 48v to 12v converter, the BMS, and of couse, the Electric Yachts of Southern California’s 100ibl electric drive assembly (the single, heaviest piece of equipment, yet only about 50 pounds).

Here’s a picture of the entire electronic beast sans the charging system (to be continued, I promise). For comparison, I have also included a photo of the original single cylinder, 8HP Farymann diesel for a before and after comparison:

Now, keep in mind that when everything gets mounted, secured down and/or removed from its packaging it will be a whole lot neater and better organized. The reason I did this was to get a better idea of the weight distribution. With no water in the tanks, lockers basically empty and no anchor chain in the bow I can confirm that everything is in trim, balanced, and bobbing high on her waterline like a happy little duck!

I also now know that I will have more room than before and can rebuild the stairs to give me a tad more standing room under an open hatch. I can even add a third step/trash can to the plan.

Anyway, today was a productive day. After everything was ground off (thanks, Mike Gunning from Electric Yachts of Southern California, for the obvious, but overlooked suggestion!) and hammered to within an inch of its life, scrubbed, washed, dried with a shop vac and mocked up to check weight distribution I now know what will be on next week’s To Do list: Battery mounts; 12v house battery location (I might move the outside Lithium batteries to under the settees and move the 12v house battery (I’m thinking about getting a single Mastervolt SlimLine 185AH, compressed AGM ($700 & 119 pounds) to a lower, more centered position for better weight distribution. And, it would be easy to make it accessible and secured under the lowest step.

Sometimes, it equals freedom. The ability to do what I want, when I want, without worrying about other peoples’ agendas and timelines.

Other times, it means that I have no one to share my surprises with. No one to call when I’m happy and want to enjoy it with – sharing a great joke, a great sunset or a great life… As Gordon Sumner (a.k.a. Sting) sang in one of my favorite boating songs, Valparaiso, “…how will she know of the devils I’ve seen.”

Then there are times that I feel real, centered and alive…and yet, sometimes, that makes me feel a little guilty. I question if I am selfish, self-centered, or greedy? Yet, I always come to the conclusion that I am not.

I am a loaner by nature.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve known that I was an individual long before I knew what it meant to be part of a team. If wanted to hike out to my favorite lake to go fishing, about three or four miles away, through the woods behind my elementary school, I would do it without hesitation. If someone wanted to tag along, great! No problem… Let’s meet at 9:00 AM at my house and we’ll take off. Oh, bring lunch and something to drink as there is nothing…nothing…out there. It only took a couple of times of being stood up or worse, having my agenda changed due to their whims/lack of planning/inconsiderations/them being themselves to realize that, “Screw this! I’ll give them 15 minutes. After that, they can catch up to me.”.

Again, I was somewhere between 8 and 10 years old when that epiphany hit.

A couple of years later, when I was 11 and in love with the outdoors, I wanted to join the Cub Scouts, but they wouldn’t let me join their organization. Their reason? There were no uniforms that would fit a 5′ 6″, 150 pound pre-teen (oh-yeah, I was a big boy). I took it hard, sure, but I also read their manual and went out and did it all by myself in about a month. I then moved onto the Boy Scouts manual and cruised through it…

What did I learn from that little life lesson? That ‘organizations’ that promote teamwork have no problem excluding those who don’t fit in with ‘their’ uniformity…

One of my favorite authors, Anneli Rufus, wrote a great book titled Party of One: the Loners’ Manifesto (http://www.annelirufus.com/partyofone/) which I find defining; “Maybe we’re not holed up in caves all day, or in submarines like Captain Nemo in his Nautilus. But alone we feel most normal. Most ourselves. Most alive.”

Those are the thoughts that are running rampant through my mind these days as my girlfriend and I have split up after being together for more than two years. There wasn’t any drama as it was planned heartbreak: She as going to go off to another college to work on her degree and I was supposed to be casting off on my Pacific Cruise aboard Sine Metu about two months later. But, and here’s the rub, she turned down a couple of scholarships so that she could shift majors at her current school and the cutting of my dock lines was delayed since the project I’m on was extended to next April; so, we are both in town and yet, we’re both single.

She’s an amazing young woman and I love her oh-so many wondrous qualities, but I wish we were together. She’s great, but she’s gone and I miss her.

This is also a not-so subtle reminder that I won’t have anyone with me while sailing for weeks at a time except for those who read this. And while that doesn’t scare me — being alone doesn’t equal being lonely — it’s a sad reminder that I will not have her to share a perfect sunset with, or to share our mutual amazement with when a pod of dolphins swim by with even if it’s just via email or the occasional phone call from some random South Pacific island.

Yeah, I think I’m guilty of wanting to explore the limits of what a long distance relationship can withstand.

I have always known that this would be the case and I need to look at this as my emotional sea trials. This is where I steel myself emotionally for the future voyage. To fortify my soul by embracing my goals and to truly advance confidently in the direction of my dreams, and endeavor to live the life which I have imagined to paraphrase Henry David Thoreau.

Alone doesn’t mean that I’m lonely…and for now, I have to keep telling myself that.